So start there: The day the tax bill came. The day the bank called your loan. The day you learned the company had shipped its $60,000 circuit board with a fatal flaw.

Sandwich the introduction.

So we can sandwich the introduction, for this structure:

Problem (“Suddenly”)

Introduction (“Once upon a time”)

Solution (“Luckily”)

Results (“Happily ever after”)

Blow up the introduction.

Or we can blow up the introduction, weaving the information parenthetically throughout the piece, for this structure:

Problem (“Suddenly”)

Solution (“Luckily”)

Results (“Happily ever after”)

Keep it short.

Stories don’t have to be long to be good.

Chast’s simple structure is a good reminder that a great narrative can be as short as three sentences. Give one sentence each to the problem, the solution, and the result, and you have a mini-parable that can help you make your point in an ad, lead or item of marginalia.

Improve your storytelling ability, by learning what it takes to tell a compelling story!

Whether telling or writing a story, fiction or real life, there are certain foundational rules of the craft that apply, and the great news is, they’re easily accessible for professional and amateur storytellers alike.

My two personal favorite resources on crafting a well-told story are – Story (Robert McKee) and On Story (Stephen King).

Books are beautiful, and computers can do clever things, but a live breathing human being stimulates people in a way no inanimate object can ever match.

So to tell stories better, show stories better.

Two ways to do that: show what you know and show how you feel.

Show what you know by using precise and pretty language.

That is, feed your listeners’ imaginations using language that evokes the senses. Don’t say “It was a hot day.” Say “The summer sun on her skin made her feel like a chicken roasting on a rotisserie rack.”

Bring us into the room where the story takes place with descriptive detail.

Point out the sticky note hanging off the corner of the desk, the afternoon hum of rush hour traffic filtering in through the closed window, the leftover aroma of the morning’s coffee in an empty, unwashed mug.

Show how you feel by conveying and displaying your own enjoyment in entertaining an audience.

When someone is eating something delicious – more than just the tongue is engaged. They may close eyes in rapture, inhale the aroma deeply, eye the plate of food the way a lover beholds the beloved. Watching someone enjoy him or herself makes you feel good, too.

Good energy is infectious.

So become a carrier of good story contagion. Let the privilege of occupying center stage inform and infuse your delivery.

That spark, the tingle – maybe even that tinge of fright that comes from standing before an audience is the energy source that animates your story.

Don’t resist it. Let it course through you and into the audience to touch them with its power.

Martin Blanco

Teacher | Director | Writer | Performer

#1 Storytelling is a performance.

It is an act of theatre where you are the author, director, and performer. And you have to play all the parts.

#2 It isn’t enough to narrate the story, you should try to perform it.

Create a voice for the narrator of the story that is different from the characters. It can be comparatively neutral or more distinctive. Give the characters distinct voices.

Take pauses. Silence is part of the story and often allows the audience to fill the quiet with their thoughts.

#5 If you have no clue how to do any of this, listen to Jim Dale read the Harry Potter books or Tim Curry read A Series of Unfortunate Events, or Garrison Keeler performing his stories or old recordings from A Prairie Home Companion.

#6 Practice reading aloud short stories or chapters from good writers. This will give you a sense of how to craft language and give your practice performing distinctive works.

#7 Remember, everyone has a story to tell. Even if it is readily apparent, you too have stories to tell.

So my advice to getting better at storytelling or advice to get better at anything is to study the best, copy what they do, and practice.

That’s really all there is to it, there’s no magic trick to getting better at storytelling or anything else in life. It’s just good old fashion practice.

The more you do it the better you get at it.

Also, take notes on everything you read that keeps your attention and look for common similarities in what you read.

There are certain things all great writers make sure to do even though you will also find that they all have their own writing style that has been influenced by someone at first in some way. Just keep writing.

For twenty years, I was married to an artist. On occasion, we’d banter with other artists about oil pastels and nupastels, gouache and watercolor, pointillism and impressionism, and – you get the idea.

When I was in a good mood, I found those discussions amusing because I discovered that the best artists (when asked) often haven’t the slightest clue how they became successful.

Ask Bill Gates or Warren Buffet how they became successful and they can whip out a powerpoint presentation within five minutes to cover the crucial bullet points.

Ask an artist or author and they’ll likely look at you with a certain degree of trepidation and uncertainty.

Sure, they can dig up an answer (often quite passionately) but give me ten minutes on google and I’ll find someone else preaching an opposing viewpoint with every bit as much passion.

Intriguing, isn’t it?

After many dozens, if not hundreds, of similar discussions with jugglers, musicians, artists, designers, and other right-brained folks, I could reasonably deduce that the conglomerate conclusion of how to be a great artist (or storyteller) is nothing more than a smorgasbord of sludge.

Michael Jackson once expressed what I’m expressing in an interview. Asked to explain how he became such a great dancer, he smiled as he concluded, “You just have to feel it.”

Other dancers can be found nodding their heads approvingly and saying, “Yup, it’s hard to explain but he’s right.”

The answer resonates with people dripping with talent.

For the rest of us, the advice sounds something akin to telling a cave troll to throw darts in a windstorm: if it throws enough darts, one may eventually hit the target – especially if they’re thrown extra hard – but uncertainty abounds.

I’m a full-time author. I used to professionally juggle and I was a professional musician as well.

Apparently, I haven’t been dripping in talent in each of these endeavors because I discovered how to articulate what an ocean of genius-savants cannot.

In storytelling, as in any art, there are several tools that you can use to become successful.

Some authors need all of the tools. Most need several tools. A rare few only need a small handful of tools.

Your style determines which tools are the most important for your success but at the end of the day, you have to become so proficient at using your tools of choice that they become intuitive.

You’ll do your best storytelling (or writing) when you’re not thinking about any of the tools. You just have to “feel it.”

Michael Jackson was well known for rehearsing himself to exhaustion. He used tools so much that he no longer thought about them. They became part of him.

This is what he means by just “feeling it.”

In short, you have to practice using each tool a bazillion times so that it becomes intuitive – and when you get to the point where something is intuitive, it can be difficult to explain because you stopped thinking about whatever it is that you’re doing.

So what tools do storytellers need?

Tradition might require starting with a solid understanding of grammatical conventions so purple prose can spontaneously materialize on demand, but when I read Jim Butcher (love his work), Mark Lawrence, or Stephen King, I have to wonder how much that matters in our modern culture.

Please don’t repeat that to your prospective editor! Certainly, it doesn’t hurt to have great prose but plot, character development, and world building chops seem more important to today’s budding authors and storytellers.

Break those three categories of tools into individual tools and you may have dozens of wrenches and screwdrivers to play with.

Happily, there are several online courses to help you experiment with those tools until they become part of your intuition.

I’ve taken online writing courses from James Patterson, Brandon Sanderson, David Farland, Malcolm Gladwell, Aaron Sorkin, and several others.

I recommend taking several courses instead of just one or two because, honestly, they each have something useful to share but few of them truly understand all of the tools well.

Save the Cat is a great book I recommend to everyone. Million Dollar Outlines and Characters & Viewpoint are other must-reads and Creating Character Arcs is definitely high on the list.

If you prefer podcasts, you can’t beat Writing Excuses.

I performed at a storytelling festival for many years. Like writing conferences and cons, these festivals offer you the opportunity to learn at the feet of your heroes in person if that suits you.

Whatever resource you choose, make sure to practice everything you learn in whatever way ensures it will be deeply ingrained into your psyche so you can just “feel” the stories coming out of you.

Recently, as I was working on an essay, I told the story to almost everyone I came in contact with: colleagues, friends, people waiting in line beside me at the coffee shop, utility workers who came to my house.

I tried out parts of the story on social media – as Instagram captions – and made a mental note of how people replied.

There are formulas. There are resources on how to structure a story and how to show, don’t tell.

Use active voice and action verbs. But, the one piece of advice that I keep coming back to is this: tell your story to an audience. Tell it to strangers. You don’t have to ask for feedback. They’ll give it. You’ll see your feedback on their faces.

Telling stories to strangers can be terrifying, and you should be prepared to fall flat sometimes. Not every story lands. But, that is how you get better. You tell a bad story or two hundred.

I’ve found that audiences are a lot kinder than you’d think.

Go to an open mic. Go to a storytelling event. Even the people beside you in line at the coffee shop will most likely listen. You can ask them first. You can say, “Wanna hear a quick story?” The worst they can say is no.

You get better at telling stories by living good stories, too.

Make sure you’re out there experiencing life. Good stories begin with a human living an experience.

You’re not going to become a great storyteller by reporting what happened on the last episode of whatever show you’re binge-watching.

To really get storytelling right, it helps to go back to English class and think about story arcs.

Every story can be reduced to three partswhere a character:

Comes to need something;

Overcomes obstacles to try to get what they want; and

Arrives at a climax where they either get it or don’t (and the reader sees what it the story meant to their life).

Whether it’s high literature, a movie, or an advertisement, the approach is exactly the same:

Romeo and Juliet fall in love, but their tangled families get in the way, and tragically things don’t end so well.

Batman is the only one who can save Gotham from the Joker, he pursues the joker doggedly, and finally foils the devious plot and wins the key to the city.

A housewife’s hectic day gets ugly when she spills coffee in the kitchen, but she cleans it triumphantly with one swipe of a Swiffer and gets to enjoy the rest of her coffee (and a moment of peace) in a clean kitchen.

The way to tell a story in your writing is to recognize the underlying conflict or need that your audience faces.

Once you can identify it, you’ll start to see how your product can be the hero, and ultimately the benefits your audience will enjoy if they become your customer.

You can read all the books you want and attend seminars but if you aren’t putting those things to use it doesn’t do much to improve your storytelling.

The Moth offers great local events where you can practice your skills. If you can’t find a storytelling event start one. Places like breweries make great partners for storytelling or story slams.

Toastmasters is a great organization that allows you to practice your skills. There are even advanced clubs that are dedicated to storytelling.

And they offer yearly contests where you can advance from your club level all the way up to the international level.

Watching live storytelling events is a great way to get inspired.

You get to see people at a variety of levels. As a comedian who is great at setup and punchline formula, I’m looking to expand beyond that and take the audience on a journey so I’m always looking for ways to strengthen my storytelling.

When you are crafting a good story, you need to think about both your message and the audience.

It helps to genuinely care about the people you are talking to.

We live at a time when raw emotional connections are particularly treasured because the language of emotional appeal has been drastically overused in popular culture.

As a result, there is a real hunger for connecting to others.

I have noticed that sincere expression always shines through even if the presentation is imperfect (of course, it depends on the context; if you are in a room with a bunch of marketers, you better know how to schmooze).

But when it comes to the kind of storytelling that puts smiles on your face and on the faces of your audience members–the kind that you are going to be proud of for the rest of your life–delivering your unique message with love, human to human, is key.

I believe the best way to become a better storyteller is to read more and better books.

And you don’t have to restrict your reading to fiction — though these genres are helpful as well. Instead, try to read a broad range of fundamentals, which can include history, science, religion and similar topics.

When you learn more, you better understand the context in which humanity fits into the universe; and that context helps you become a master storyteller.

An added benefit is that increased knowledge can give you material to include in your stories.

For example, if you were sharing a story about a fast-growing business you could compare it to developments in the Roman Empire, or if you are chatting with friends you could share a story on the origin of ghosts.